


Dinosaurs Are the Least of Our Problems

by Sage (sageness)



Category: Lumberjanes
Genre: Canon Trans Character, Cenozoic megafauna, Character(s) of Color, Chromatic Yuletide, Dimension Travel, Dimensional Rift, Dinosaurs, Disability, Don't Have to Know Canon, Friendship to the Max, Gen, Misses Clause Challenge, Queer Canon, Summer Camp, Yuletide, Yuletide 2015, awesome women, caregiver care, hardcore lady types, spacetime anomaly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 09:18:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5451479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sageness/pseuds/Sage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jo, April, and Roanoke Cabin at Miss Quinzella Thiskwin Penniququl Thistle Crumpet's Camp for <strike>Girls</strike> Hardcore Lady Types.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dinosaurs Are the Least of Our Problems

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shinealightonme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/gifts).



> This story contains vague spoilers and specific characterization details for the whole series through issue #21. April's family background is my own invention/speculation and will doubtless be jossed any minute. 
> 
> To my recipient, I hope this is at least a little bit what you were looking for. Happy Yuletide!! :D

The first Monday of summer vacation, Jo lay in the hammock in April's backyard, subconsciously tracing the arc of its gentle swing and wondering if there was time to build a new robot before they left for camp on Saturday. Above, the sky was the vivid blue of early afternoon and it was getting hot. Tree trimmers had taken some big branches down last fall, and while the lack of bird poop on the hammock was awesome, it got pretty warm there now. Or maybe that was just April being a space heater against Jo's side. April had dozed off with _Mermaid Lemonade Stand #28_ clutched in her hand, her sweaty grip leaving damp marks on the paper. Jo, meanwhile, had the Feynman Lectures on Physics open on her iPad, mostly because every time she reread it she noticed something new, but today her mind just wouldn't focus. She kept watching clouds flit by, birds squawking at territorial invaders, squirrels playing what looked for all the world like a game of tag.

The squirrels were racing across the yard when she saw a curtain flutter and a thin hand wave. Without a thought, Jo rolled off the hammock, dropped her tablet neatly onto her backpack, and was loping through the kitchen door before April had even managed a sleep-startled, "Wait, what?"

"Hey, you're up!" Jo said brightly to April's mom. "How are you feeling? Can I get you anything?" The home healthcare aide had gone after helping April's mom bathe and eat a little before her meds knocked her out. Jo wasn't expecting to see her until April's dad got home from work, at the earliest.

"Oh, heavens, Jo. I was only waving hello." April's mom stood at the counter, stirring a mug of her stomach-soothing herbal tea, and looked wanly at Jo. "You know you don't have to play Florence Nightingale here."

"Well, obviously," Jo said, flourishing a hand at the fact of April's mom standing and making her own tea. "It's just nice to see you up and around." Jo gave her the gentlest possible version of her patented 'Look-I'm-a-lot-taller-than-you-now!' bear hug and tried not to notice how thin her fluffy cloud of gray hair had become.

"Thanks, it's nice to be up. You two looked comfortable out there." 

"It's warm out today. I was just about to come in for some water when I saw you. Can I make you a sandwich or something while I'm here? April's going to be hungry in about five minutes anyway, so I might as well." Jo began pulling down plates and bread without waiting for an answer.

Right on cue, April sauntered in. She had a wide diamond of hammock mesh indented into her face and her pale green scarf was askew in her tangled curls. She was still holding her book. "Hi Mom, hi Jo!" April took in where her mother was standing and immediately pushed a stool up to the island for her. "Here, you can sit down and stay a while."

"Hi, sweetheart. Thank you," her mom said and eased onto it carefully.

"Here's the chicken salad we made the other day," Jo called from the fridge. "Ape, are you hungry yet?"

"That sounds great, thanks." April hugged her mother like she was made of porcelain. "Did you sleep? Apparently I crashed out hard."

"I was reading, though I dozed off for a while, I guess. Is this Lemonade Stand book not measuring up?" Her mom plucked the paperback out of April's grasp and began reading the back cover. " 'Coral Reef's Hettie and Leticia branch out into the smoothie business while Ondine and the naiads battle an unknown foe from the Mariana Trench.' I thought you liked Ondine."

"I do!" April said fervently. "She's great! It's just Hettie and Leticia are so..." She broke off with a dramatic sigh. "That thing where they like each other but neither one will tell the other how they feel? It's so boring! They should totally just kiss already and go help Ondine."

"Monsters from the Mariana Trench sound more fun, anyway," Jo put in when April's mother didn't answer at once. Then Jo jerked her chin at the fruit bowl on the counter and mimed chopping until April got the hint. Moments later, Jo was sliding plates and water glasses across the island, sandwiches and fruit for everyone.

"Thank you, Jo," April's mom said. "This looks nice."

"Dad would ask me why there's no green on this plate," Jo said with a laugh that quickly turned into a frown. "Are you in the mood for anything in particular? Gosh, I didn't even ask what I should make. I'm sorry. Do you want something else?"

April's mom squeezed her forearm. "Jo, sweetheart, this is fine. More than fine. I appreciate both of you trying to get some calories into me. These days, I think trying to make a simple grilled cheese would knock me flat."

"I can make you one whenever you want," April said, "and if you're in the mood for something we don't have, tell me and I'll put it on the list."

"Every time I wake up, someone's trying to feed me." April's mom chuckled, but Jo still heard the tone of forced cheer she gave the home health aides when she was feeling rotten, especially as she added, "It's nice to feel so well taken care of."

Jo nodded and stared at her plate, wishing she'd thought to reheat a casserole or look for her favorite meat and potatoes curry she'd sent home with April's dad the night before. There wasn't anything wrong with chicken salad, other than that it would turn the bread soggy if she didn't hurry up and eat her stupid sandwich, but her appetite had vanished – because the thing they weren't acknowledging was sitting there, getting bigger and bigger, filling up the room. It was terrible feeling so helpless. But there wasn't anything else to do but do the thing in front of you, as her dads would say, and right now that meant eating her lunch.

Meanwhile, April was telling them about the new mermaid characters who had joined Ondine's naiads since their last adventure. April's mom said "ahh" and "hmm" at the right places, mostly, but after only a few minutes it was obvious how wiped out she was. 

Jo had spent literally years in this house, ever since she and April were in preschool. They used to spend just as much time up the street at Jo's, where April practically lived in the swimming pool, because mermaid, but then her mom had gotten sick and playing after school or slumber parties or group projects became a fraught question of "Do we go to April's in case her mom wants quality time or do we go somewhere else so as not to disturb her?" In the end, they spent a lot of time in April's backyard because it was close enough, maybe, without being too loud. Close enough in case April's mom triggered the alarm on the Molly Weasley's Clock app Jo had written for their phones, and also close enough for one of Jo's dads to descend and sweep the girls off for dinner, sending April home afterward with leftovers and wet hair and "Under the Sea" inevitably earworming them all.

As she watched April's mom pick at her food, Jo tried to feel grateful, or at least more calm than sad. April's mom was still up and walking around. She was dressed in loose track pants and a t-shirt today instead of a flannel nightgown and wool socks in June. She was even eating the food Jo had made, and with luck the tea would help her keep it down. It was a good day. It was the sort of good day they were supposed to appreciate.

Jo looked up and met April's eyes across the island. April nodded, and Jo knew that if the cabinets weren't in the way, April would have just kicked their feet together to say she felt it, too. 

April's mom ate two thirds of the sandwich, every orange wedge, and none of the apple slices. "You two should go do something fun today," she told them before returning blearily to bed. Jo boxed up the fruit for later. April put the dishes in the dishwasher.

Once April had loaded the last plate, Jo sighed and used one of their oldest code phrases, "Tell me again what you'd do to Ursula if you were Ariel?"

"I'd bash her evil purple face in and braid all of her tentacles together," April replied, her face twisting into a grimace.

Jo didn't want to cry, and she definitely wanted to stop cataloging the things April's mom used to be able to manage on her good days that weren't possible anymore. She reeled April in for a hug. 

"Really, this is basically what the counselor at the hospital told us to expect," April said after a while. There was a pile of snotty paper napkins on the counter next to them. April's face was red and blotchy. Jo's eyes felt scratchy and swollen. "I mean, we're doing everything we're supposed to."

"I know. It's still awful, though." Jo gazed out the kitchen window at the hammock and trees and perfect afternoon sunlight. One of the squirrels was sniffing her backpack. She'd forgotten her iPad was still out there, too – oops. "Let's go back outside. Or maybe to my place? I want to reprogram the pool cleaner."

"Yeah, okay," April said.

Jo texted her dads and April called her dad at work. Jo listened to her report how much her mom had eaten and how tired she was after. She was clearly trying to put the best spin on it she could, but April's voice still cracked when she asked him whether she should skip camp this summer after all. Jo wrapped an arm around April and was close enough to hear him say, "April, honey, we talked about this. We have to take care of ourselves, too, and for you that means Lumberjanes camp. You and Jo are going to have a great time spending the summer with kids your own age."

"But what if she gets worse?" April said in a small voice.

"The doctors told us she's essentially stable, remember? About how this is the new normal? She could stay as well as she is for...years, even."

April sniffed. "Okay, if you say so. And I know Jo's dads said they'll come get me if something happens. I just...worry, is all."

"Of course, that's only natural. This is a lot to deal with, but you're doing just fine. I'll see you tonight and we'll talk more then, okay?"

"Yeah, okay. I love you."

"Love you, too. If you're going to swim, take a sweater for the walk home."

"Sure, Dad." April hung up and scrubbed a hand over her face. "I'm totally going to swim."

 

*

 

It was mid-afternoon three days later, and Jo had just gotten home from a busy day of errands and appointments. They'd picked up April on the way home, and now it was totally pool time. Jo raced out the patio door and did a cannonball into the deep end. Right behind her, April executed what was undoubtedly a perfect swan dive, if Jo had been in a position to actually see it, and proceeded to swim three and a half lengths mere inches from the bottom, as if she were some kind of creepy shark monster or something.

"It freaks me out so much when you do that!" Jo complained when April finally burst forth from the deep.

"What? What'd I do?" April said, startled.

"A-aaape! who stays under for that long? Actual humans have to breathe!" 

"Mermaid!" April yelled exultantly and dove back under.

"Augh!" Jo tipped onto her back, promptly sank because she had nothing in the way of body fat to keep her buoyant, and then swam over to her favorite floating lounger. Above them, _The Little Mermaid_ clicked into life on the big screen, even though April hadn't even asked to watch it today. Jo wondered if one of her dads was trying to be helpful or if the house itself had turned it on. Either was possible. Jo watched for a while, despite having the entire movie memorized, and thought about undersea architecture. Then she paddled over to get her waterproof tablet out of the electronics niche. She had an idea. Granted, it was probably reinventing the wheel, but how else did you learn how things worked if not by building them?

Eventually April surfaced and flopped onto the other lounger, literally bending it to her will, since she wasn't tall enough to get onto it any other way.

Jo watched April settle herself on the float, long red hair, creamy skin, bright pink swimsuit, and – "Hey, new pedicure! I like!" Jo wiggled her own brown toes in the water. April's nails were now an awesome pale metallic green that shimmered to teal in the sunlight. Jo's had been her favorite shade of dark purple but now were all chipped and grown out. Yet another thing to do before camp.

"Thanks, I love this color."

"Do mine later? I'm going to forget before Saturday. Also, don't forget your sunscreen," Jo reminded. 

"I just put on SPF 50!" April cried, spinning herself over to the sunscreen basket suction-cupped between the pool and hot tub

"And swam it right off." Jo tapped the edge of her tablet. "So, I was thinking about underwater houses again. Like, not just research labs or habitats or that hotel in the Keys, but places anybody could live. I mean, climate change is going to put so many places on the coasts underwater. If we could just make undersea houses a feasible thing..."

"I really want to go to that hotel someday," April said, rubbing on yet more sunblock. "Can you imagine anything more perfectly up my alley?"

"Right? You have to be scuba certified to get down there, though, which is actually something we should totally do someday." 

"That would be fantastic! My parents would flip out completely, but it would be fantastic. But I thought you were designing a seafloor rover?"

"Well yeah, that too, but the problems are the same for rovers, submarines, and full human habitats. You've got the pressure, the temperature, electricity, communications with the surface, and transportation. It's so much more complicated than tinkering with our pool cleaning bot or turbo-charging our Roombas. I mean, if you're living underwater, you can't be worrying about all that stuff. It has to be automated. And also safe."

"Like you want every house to be a smart house."

"Well, obviously!" Jo said. "I love our smart house."

"I love your smart house, too. But you have to admit your dads have advantages the average consumer doesn't. I didn't understand half of what he said the other night about firewalls and anti-hacking countermeasures."

Jo sighed proudly. "They're both pretty genius. Frances Gabe, Grace Hopper genius."

"Deeply," April agreed. "And you are, too. I bet you'll end up graduating college before you can even vote. MIT and CalTech do that, don't they? Take prodigies? What about Carnegie Mellon?"

"The dads say yes, and please, because they also say California is way too far and they'll literally cry if I make them move across the country to keep an eye on me, so I shouldn't even tease them about CalTech."

April started giggling. "Oh my gosh, I can so hear them saying that."

"It would be hilarious if it weren't one hundred percent true! They would totally move us all to California. And cry. _Noisily_."

"I'd want to come, too. I mean, I'd still be in high school, but still." April made a face. "I don't know what you're going to do without me there to watch your back."

"Hey, we're not there yet," Jo said, and paddled her lounger over to take April's hand. "I don't even know if any of those places will even take me. I mean, hello, way underage and trans is a lot to ask."

"Anyone who's mean to you I will punch into outer space," April said, deadly serious.

"And that's why I love you. You and your mile-wide protective streak."

" 's what I do," April said with a dark grin.

Jo grinned back, and then remembered she hadn't caught April up on the first half of her day. "So, doctor's appointment."

"Yes! Tell me everything!"

"HRT is a go—" 

"Yes!" April shouted, punching the air.

Jo ducked her head and shrugged. "—for when we get back from camp. The doc said the side effects can be pretty epic, which we knew, but my dads were all, 'It would be super-dumb to start a new med that's going to cause drastic changes and then immediately send you out into the wilderness, miles and miles from the nearest hospital, without us there to watch out for you.' Jo sighed, "Fair point, right?"

"No kidding. But still, this is great!" April grabbed Jo's feet before they drifted too far apart. "Did they say if it's still early enough? You were worried about waiting too long."

"The doctor said it's never actually too late to transition. She has patients who started in their forties, even."

"Whoa, seriously?"

"They have to have more surgery and stuff if they want to pass because their bone structure's all established and stuff, but yeah."

April blinked, then tilted her head and gave Jo the same kind of once-over the doctor had that morning. "Will you? Have to have surgery, I mean?"

Jo made a face and April immediately stopped staring at her. "She wouldn't say, but apparently it's really common to need surgery to reduce the size of the Adam's apple. The rest, well. It can take, like, five to ten years to get real breasts, and, uh, the pants stuff—"

Jo broke off as April stole the tablet out of her hands, opened a browser, and started tapping. "Give me two minutes. You know how fast I read."

With a snort, Jo rolled off her lounger and swam a few laps until she felt a little better. 

When she returned, April said, "Yeah, your hands were totally shaking. Sorry. I didn't mean to stress you out."

Jo gave her a wry look. "That obvious, huh?"

April raised an eyebrow and gestured to the tablet. "No, I'd call it entirely fair. 'Pants stuff' is a big deal."

Jo nodded. "The doctor was all, 'The meds are going to make changes throughout your whole body, not just in the sex organs. We have to give them time to work before we think about surgery of any kind.' And then Dad was like, 'Sweetheart, you really don't want to chop anything off without a complete data set to make informed decisions from.' "

April erupted into giggles. "Oh my gosh, he knows you so well!"

Jo started laughing despite herself. 

"So, we get home from camp and you start meds." April read a little further. "Hey, it says you can still get hips! That the estrogen will reshape the whole pelvis or something?"

"Yeah, in patients whose pelvis hasn't fused yet, and I'm way too young for that. I wish I could start today," Jo said dreamily, "but I get why it would be dumb. I just really hope I don't have another growth spurt between now and August. If I could just stay exactly like this until we get back..." She looked down at her narrow lap and baggy red boardshorts. They matched the red pattern of her bikini top perfectly, but they weren't the bottoms from the set. Those lived in her underwear drawer, along with her Batgirl and Ms. Marvel panties that were way too loose in the butt and the smaller, less fun ones that actually fit. 

"Okay, so best friends no matter what," April said, using her feet to hook their loungers together again.

Jo looked up. "Yes?"

"Yes, that's what I'm saying."

"Well, yeah," Jo said, confused. 

April made a face. "Let me try this again. How about: personal question time. Personal pants question time, I mean, except literally a clothes thing." 

Jo swallowed around a lump in her throat, but waited to hear April out. 

"I was wondering if you wear boardshorts because you prefer them, or if it's like a modesty thing? Because I keep thinking that your bikini's a really cute print and you should get to wear the bottoms if you want to – at least here! I mean, camp might be a different story, but this is your own house!"

"Ape." Jo looked away and was dazzled by the afternoon sun glinting on the water. "You just...how are you even reading my mind right now?"

April waved a hand between them. "I know how much this means to you."

Jo swallowed hard; there had been a lot of tears when she'd first made it clear to her dads that playing dress-up in April's closet wasn't a passing phase, but April had been there through it all, staunchly demanding to know why Jo couldn't be a girl when she obviously already was one. "You are the actual best, you know that?" Jo said, and slid off her lounger to hug her.

"Yup, that's me." April hugged back until Jo's ribs creaked, and then asked, "Am I burning?"

Jo pulled away to check, then nodded. "Little bit. Your nose is getting pink."

"Already?!" April yelled in outrage. "That is so unfair! You've never had a sunburn in your life!"

Jo laughed. "Would you rather have some of my height or my melanin?"

"Both!" April said. "The only valid answer to that is both!"

Grinning widely, Jo said, "Come on. Let's go in. You can help me finish packing."

April nearly tripped on the steps climbing out. "Are you kidding me? We leave in, what, forty-one hours? How are you still not packed?"

Jo laughed and didn't ask how many pieces April's luggage count was up to. "I only take what I can carry?"

April folded her really exceptionally strong arms. "Same."

"Fine," Jo allowed, "but mine will all fit in your third biggest suitcase...probably. Except the sleeping bag."

"Ah, but I always _use_ everything!" April pointed out triumphantly.

"And if I forget anything, I'll just borrow yours!" Jo answered with a grin. They took the patio door into the architecturally misnamed 'pool' room, the fancy dressing room with showers to rinse off the pool salt, heated towels, dressing cubicles, and a long vanity with every possible skin care, beauty, and hygiene need. 

"Oh!" April said, "Speaking of things that are mine, do you realize that all of my swimsuits are here? I mean, of course they are, but last night I was thinking about the river and lake and coverups and sarongs—"

"Yeah, you do know camp isn't in Hawaii, right?" Jo stepped into a shower stall to rinse the salt out of her hair. "The water there's going to be freezing for at least the first month."

"I can still look cute!" April declared from the other stall. "I'm sure it'll be warm enough by the end of July. Besides, we might have a freak heatwave!"

"You'll look cute no matter what, but, yes, obviously you'll be prepared."

"Oh, plan on it."

"I generally do," Jo said, exiting the shower and reaching for a towel and robe. "Oh, hey, did your dad decide yet if you're riding up with us? Dad was wondering."

"Last night he seemed pretty determined to drive me himself," April called, and Jo heard the snap of the conditioner bottle. "Like, he was calling it father-daughter bonding time or whatever? To be honest, though, I wonder if he doesn't just want to get away for a few hours. Like, remember those Sunday drives when we were little? When they traded off so the others could have kid-free grownup time?"

"Oh wow." Jo frowned into the mirror. "I never thought of it like that. Should we invite him over more, do you think? I mean, I know there's a major generation gap between your parents and mine, but even grownups need friends."

"You'd think! And your dads told me to invite him ages ago, so I keep asking but he keeps saying he'd rather just hang out at home, even if that means leftovers and television and Mom zonking out twenty minutes after she takes her meds." 

April emerged at last, her wet hair easily reaching her hips. Jo liked her own choppy bob well enough when she bothered to fix it, but she did wonder what it would be like to live with super-long hair all the time. 

"Not that I don't one hundred percent get wanting to be there for the half hour a day that she's both awake and feeling sort of okay, and, well, they are married. I just...you know, speaking realistically, sometimes I can't help but wonder what he's going to do after she's gone. Maybe he has friends at work, though?"

Jo shrugged and started dotting acne gel onto her chin. "Maybe? Or maybe he wants other grownups to ask him so it's not like we're meddling in his life or whatever."

"Pesky kids!" April warbled in a silly cartoon voice and giggled. "Wait, does anyone still say 'pesky'?"

"No one under fifty, probably?" Jo answered with a wink. "Unless it's ironic?" Soon, they were moisturized, styled, made up, and dressed. "All right, let's do this thing." Upstairs, her bed was buried under three duffels, her old school backpack, and a drift of clean clothes. Every dresser drawer hung open.

"You're not taking all of this," April said sternly.

"Well, obviously." Jo shook her head. "Wow. I hate packing." 

"You say that like we've never even met. Seriously, start with the socks and underwear. You have the ones you're wearing Saturday, pack seven more, and you have an extra in case of gross hikes or whatever before laundry day." April plucked a couple of t-shirts from Jo's bed and then disappeared into the closet. "Cute solid tops, cute stripey tops, cute graphic tops, another cute top I know you'll hide under your hoodie but that's okay because eventually you'll get hot and take it off so we can all see how adorable you are in your cute top." April emerged with a stack of shirts that did, indeed, usually stay hidden under Jo's favorite red hoodie or brown jacket or both.

"What else?" Jo asked, stowing them in the bag next to her underwear.

"Shorts? Pants? Tank tops? Camisoles? Swimwear? Something warm in case we do a field trip?"

"To what, Canada?"

"I don't know! Mount Glory's right there! What if we get a really ambitious counselor who wants us to get that crazy mountaineering badge? Also, pajamas."

"What? Oh, right." Jo grabbed hot and cold sleep clothes and flip-flops for the shower, but then she got distracted by her workbench and her various robots in progress. She hadn't decided which of her tiny tool kits to take. With no electronics allowed, she probably wouldn't need the set of micro-screwdrivers. The bigger ones, though, and the multi-tool, and the vise grips, and just maybe her smallest acetylene torch—

"Toiletries first, then toys," April said firmly. "Deodorant? Razor? Toothbrush? Shower stuff? Towel and washcloths? Shoes?"

Jo rolled her eyes. "We have forty-plus hours. I'll do them Saturday morning."

"Orrr you could put a bag in your bathroom, pack it now, put the stuff back in as you use it, and toss it in your backpack Saturday!"

Grumbling, Jo crossed to her bathroom. "Toiletries case, check." She started tossing in essentials. "Is there a badge for this? Practical packing, maybe? They'd probably call it 'Practically Packed' or 'Packing for Mars' or something."

"Hmmm...how about 'Organizational Wizardry'?"

"That's an idea!" Jo leaned against the door frame and contemplated. "There would have to be subsets or something, though. I mean, are you organizing people or things or an event or what? Because this thing where you can cram three cubic yards of stuff into a space that only holds one is a pretty amazing trick, but I think I'd call it something like 'Folding Spacetime For Fun and Profit'. Or, I know! 'Spacetime Origami'!"

April looked up from Jo's sock drawer. "Hands."

Jo blinked. "What?"

April aimed a meaningful look at Jo's fingers, which, fine, were shaking again. "It's going to be fine."

"April!" Jo flopped down across the foot of her bed and threw her arms over her face. "You don't get it! Two-night Lumberjane troop camp-outs are a totally different thing from going for the whole summer. What if someone flips out because I'm – because I've got—"

"Because they're a transphobic jerkface and a rotten excuse for a human being? We tell a counselor and let her fix it because that's her job." April shoved Jo's luggage aside, crawled over the piles of clothes, and curled up next to her. "But being mean like that is the exact opposite of what Lumberjanes are all about." April poked her in the side. "Tell me you know this."

"I doooo," Jo said, rubbing at her face. "I know, I really do. Rationally, anyway. I just...it's stupid."

"Being worried isn't stupid." April scooted up so that the sides of their heads were touching, just the way they used to sprawl across their nap-mats together in kindergarten. Jo immediately took a deep breath and felt her heart rate slow down. "So," April continued, "what you're saying is your nightmares are back."

Jo made a face at the ceiling fan. "It's just because of the appointment today, that's all. I'll be fine once I'm there and reality proves all the weird stuff in my head totally and completely wrong."

April took Jo's hand and squeezed, hard. "Anyone who can't appreciate how awesome you are doesn't deserve to hang out with you, and if what is or isn't going on in your pants is a problem for them, all I can say is they're really, really not worth your time."

"April—"

"Jo, you're as much a Lumberjane as anyone. If somebody else can't deal, then they need to leave. Not us." 

"Us," Jo said faintly.

"Yes, that is totally the word I just used. _We_ are going to camp, where we will leave our worries behind until August, _we_ are going to have the best and funnest summer it is possible for us to have, and _we_ are going to do it together."

Jo felt a rush of heat in her cheeks and finally she just let the relief pour out in a giant, April-enveloping hug. "You are my favoritest best friend ever. In case you weren't absolutely sure or something."

"You too." April beamed up at her. "As if I'd let you go anywhere without me. Actually, wait. Am I eating here or going home today? Did I forget to check?"

Jo reluctantly loosened her hold as April sat up. "I have no idea?"

"Me either!" April said sunnily, and dug out her phone.

 

*

 

Jo, April, Mal, Molly, and Ripley waved goodbye to Seafarin' Karen as she sailed off into the late morning sun and away from April's million and one questions about selkies, sea monsters, and Karen herself. April was really taking her new Bestiary research to heart, and Jo was glad. Disillusionment felt pretty terrible, as Jo had learned when wearing a dress to school the first time hadn't magically solved all her identity problems. For April, meeting real mermaids and learning there was a massive difference between fiction and the real thing had been pretty rough. 

"I get that it was always just a dream, but the dream isn't nice anymore," April had told her in a quiet moment a couple of days after the Bandicoot Bacchanal. "I can't just wish myself a mermaid, like suddenly having a tail is going to magically heal my mom and take all my troubles away."

Jo had squeezed her shoulder and said, "We need dreams, though. I don't get why escapism has to be a bad thing. Sometimes people just need a break." 

April had nodded sadly. "I know, believe me. But maybe I should focus on real life a little more. I mean, there are so many other weird, non-mermaid things here that we don't really know anything about. Maybe I can do something with that."

"So...lunch?" Molly said when Karen's boat rounded the bend in the distance.

"We should probably hurry," Jo said. "Jen wanted us to be ready for a hike at one o’clock."

"I wonder if we'll get to climb trees today," Ripley said as they turned back toward camp.

"At least it isn't more canoeing." Mal took Molly's hand and they ambled up the path together.

"I wonder what uncanny and completely improbable thing we'll meet next," April said. 

"I wouldn't mind meeting someone who could explain how this stuff even works," Jo answered. "I mean, from a position of pure physics—"

April laughed. "You can't look at it like that, though. I mean, we know the Bear Woman exists. We know she can change her form. She says she's in control of the shift. And she's got magic glasses that let her see portals between dimensions."

Jo gestured wildly. "That's exactly what I mean! How?!"

Ripley turned a cartwheel on the path in front of them and landed with her hands planted stubbornly on her hips. "Jo! It's because it's magic."

"Yes, but magic is just our word for science that we haven't figured out yet," Jo argued.

"Right, but every single weird thing we've seen this summer comes out of some magical or mythical or fairytale or otherwise supernatural legend." April patted her arm. "I know it's hard to accept. I am totally with you on that."

"The dinosaurs were historical, though," Molly called back to them. "Although, okay, I admit the adorable baby rexy who stole the Bear Woman's glasses was kind of unlikely."

"Yes, that!" Jo exclaimed. "I just want to understand! I mean, theoretical physics has things like string theory and strange loops that could hypothetically account for travel between dimensions or across millennia, I guess, but there aren't actual _rules_ for this stuff. I mean, I promise you, electricity does not work like that underwater!"

April grinned up at her. "That's still bothering you, huh?"

"So much, you don't even know!" Jo tugged at her hair in frustration.

"Aw, Jo, it's okay," Ripley said, bouncing back to Jo's side and hugging her tight. "Maybe you'll be the one to discover the science-y rules! Or it could be you and Jen together, since she does physics, too."

Jo bit off the "But you're missing the point!" that was on the tip of her tongue. Ripley was trying to be supportive, even if the opinion of a twelve-year-old who slept with a pink and purple stuffed unicorn was maybe not the most astute when it came to the hard sciences. Really, they all were being super-nice as far as letting Jo vent about how impossible all this stuff was, but now they'd reached the mess hall and the conversation turned to food. As they filed through the serving area, April casually packed extra fruit and bags of chips into her backpack with an air of having been told to by someone official, and so no one interfered. Mal reiterated how she would always take a forest hike over a riverbank hike, much less another boating expedition. Molly suggested she and Mal plan another private picnic on their next free day. Jo made herself stop picking at the puzzle and just enjoy camp lunch with her friends.

 

*

 

"Okay!" Jen said with determined enthusiasm. They'd hiked so far up this ankle-twisting hillside trail that Jo couldn't even hear the familiar noises of camp anymore. "Today we're working on those wilderness skills we discovered you guys didn't have during the tent failure, unseasonable blizzard, subsequent avalanche, and Grootslang adventure. So! Let's begin with what's under our feet. Who can tell me what kind of path we're on?" She raised her eyebrows hopefully.

"Um. A forest path?" April suggested doubtfully.

Jo frowned. "You mean...what made the path?"

"Yes," Jen said with a smile. "What made it? Have a look around. What do you notice?"

Mal shrugged and turned a circle. "It isn't like the ones paved with tree bark—" 

"Mulch," Jen put in.

"—mulch back at camp. It's super-narrow, and there's some bare dirt in the middle but grass and weeds on the sides. If people made it by hiking through wilderness, it would probably be wider, right? So it maybe wasn't made by humans?"

"But people don't use little tracks through the forest that often," Molly said." I mean, at home I walk across the grass and it just springs back up. This would have to be used kind of a lot, right? Otherwise, it wouldn't be bare dirt."

"Did deer make it?" Ripley asked, bouncing in place. "Or wolves? Or antler-wolves?"

"Wolves don't—" Jen began, and then broke off. "Never mind, as of this summer I stand alarmingly and improbably corrected. Some wolves totally do." She smiled at Ripley. "Deer are a good guess. Smaller animals don't have the mass to push the brush out of the way, so it has to be something fairly substantial to wear away the plants and make the path permanent, and we have many more deer around here than wolves." 

"It's way too narrow for a moose trail," Molly said, pointing out the distance between the trees.

"Or yeti," April added. "Remember how big their feet were? Shoulders, too." 

Jen pinched the bridge of her nose and was silent for a long moment. "I'm trying to decide whether I'm more relieved not to have been there for that one or more horrified that you guys met actual yeti without adult supervision."

"Aw, Jen, don't be horrified!" Ripley jumped up into her arms, a wide grin splitting her face. 

"Oof! Rip!" Jen complained. 

"But it was fine! I gave them all my cookies and they left us alone. Most of my cookies. Yeti like cookies!"

As Jen braced herself, Ripley, and Ripley's full-body monkey hug against the tree behind her, Jo saw the branch at Jen's shoulder swing back, exposing a hinge. Jo heard something click, and then the path and forest floor beneath them were falling away into nothingness.

Jo screamed as she fell, observing that it was impossible to make yourself stop screaming when it was an involuntary response to pure terror. They landed on thick spongy moss this time, at least. Not bare stone or each other or a bed of poison ivy, as had happened before. The impact was still enough to knock the remaining breath out of her lungs, though, and for several moments all she could do was gasp for breath and hope she hadn't peed herself.

Once she had wiggled all of her fingers and toes and confirmed that she was still in one piece, she saw the others had also landed on the soft moss and were slowly moving their limbs. April met her gaze, and Jo reached out to squeeze her hand. Then Jo looked up at the sky and her blood ran cold. Around them stood enormous, impossibly tall, incredibly alien trees interspersed among an understory of saplings and giant bushes. The monolithic trees could have been straight out of the prehistoric forest Jo and her dads had visited on their epic family vacation to Australia two years ago. It was as if a pine tree, a palm tree, and a potted fern all decided to have babies together. Except these were bigger. Way bigger.

"Is everyone okay?" Jen asked from partway under Ripley, who still wasn't letting go. "Come on, Rip, I need to sit up."

They answered with variations on, "I think so," and, "I can't tell yet," and, "The landing knocked the wind out of me," as they slowly recovered their senses. Even Bubbles chirped an affirmative before curling back up in Molly's hair.

Eventually Mal panted, "This can't be happening to us again," aiming a glare up at the empty sky above them.

"It wasn't even our fault this time!" Molly agreed. "I mean, we weren't following the Bear Woman through portals to other dimensions or anything!"

"Do you think that's where we are?" April asked, getting wobbily to her feet and looking around. "Is this the 'lost place' you guys went with her?"

"I really, really hope not," Mal said as she and Molly helped each other up. "I mean, I've basically had it up to here with dinosaurs. I don't care how cute baby raptors are, their mamas are super-scary."

"If it's not that, then what is it?" Ripley asked. "Where are we, Jen?"

"Are you sure you're all okay?" Jen asked, touching all of their heads or shoulders in turn as if to reassure herself that this was actually happening.

Jo nodded and stood up. "I'm fine, but look," she said, pointing up at the empty blue sky and the unfamiliar trees around them. "This isn't our forest."

Jen looked up, and up, and turned a full circle, staring at the trees, eventually making it down to the forest floor and their squishy bed of moss. With a muttered, "Fanny Bullock Workman, give me strength," Jen took another deep breath and visibly steeled her nerves. "All right, then. Camp rule number one: safety and shelter are our top priorities, and this is true regardless of whether we're on a day hike around camp or we're...wherever we are now. Especially if there's a chance we might be in the same place Molly and Mal went with the Bear Woman."

"This doesn't look familiar," Molly said tentatively, "but it was a really big place. We didn't go everywhere."

"But how do we get back?" April asked, peering up at the empty sky.

Jo scanned the undergrowth surrounding them and shook her head. "Unless one of us can secretly detect interdimensional rifts, I think we might have to wait for someone to come get us."

"Do you think the Bear Woman can find us with her magic glasses?" Ripley asked.

Jo tousled Ripley's hair, riffling the recently refreshed blue streak. "I think Jen's right. We should worry about that after we find some shelter."

In the end, Ripley climbed the skinniest fern tree they could find and called down what she could see as she shimmied her way around the trunk. There was forest one way, "a ginormous, huge, really big lake" in the other direction, and a big rocky place in between.

Jen asked Ripley a lot more questions, compass in hand, and then helped her slide down. "Before we do anything else, we need to find a safe place to make camp," Jen said. "I don't like being out in the open in a completely alien environment like this."

"What if the Bear Woman comes to rescue us, though?" Ripley asked.

"We could leave a note," April suggested. "I have my diary in my backpack. There's paper." 

"That's a good idea," Jen said, "but paper might dissolve if it rains. Let's use a pocketknife and carve it into a tree near where we landed." 

They hiked back to the crushed bed of moss and Jo watched Jen carve, "Roanoke to rocks," with an arrow and a compass heading below it.

Meanwhile, Mal was shaking her head back and forth as her worry ratcheted up into full-on panic. "We are so unprepared for this. We don't even have camping gear! I mean, do we even have matches or something to make a fire with? Or would a fire just draw all the predators in the whole entire area to come and eat us! Oh gosh," she said, voice suddenly dropping to a whisper. "What if they hear us? I'm being too noisy, aren't I?" 

As April said, "Don't worry, I'll guard you," Jo looked around in alarm; she didn't see anything but trees and bushes, though.

"Hey, hey Mal! It's okay!" Molly was saying; then she wrapped her arms around Mal as she hyperventilated.

"It's like the forest has it in for us specifically!" Mal flailed. "We're doomed, don't you get it?"

Jen put away her pocketknife and took Mal's head in her hands. "Mal, breathe. We're still alive and we are absolutely going to get back to camp safe and sound, okay? Now focus," Jen said. "First, we get somewhere safe. Then we deal with the rest," she said firmly. "Come on, everyone."

It turned out they had been in sort of a bowl on the side of a low hill. In the distance toward the lake Jo thought she saw a cloud of something dark blotting out the air above the trees. Her mind provided the words, "giant bees," but that wasn't possible. That was anxiety playing tricks on her, it had to be, which was why she didn't say it out loud. Besides, Mal was still not over her panic attack and saying something that would make it worse would only be cruel. Instead, she walked on and noticed that with Mal so upset, Jo found her own anxiety easier to manage. It was as if Mal was using up all the available terror, which left Jo's head clear to watch the terrain around them like she was playing a character in a video game. She looked right, left, up, and down over and over as they made their slow way through the forest underbrush and noticed how the moss grew sparser the farther they walked. 

The path they were on was wide enough to comfortably walk two-by-two, but then it crossed what looked like an overgrown dirt road. A weirdly wide road, Jo thought, but then she saw the footprints: some of them were holes the size of SUVs. Behind her, she heard Mal whisper, "Yeah, so what if I just don't look?" Then she scrubbed a hand over her face and said, "What the junk, you guys? I am legit aces at cities, I swear. This isn't me at all!"

Jen waved to get their attention and pressed a finger to her lips. She whispered, "We're going to run across to where our path continues on the other side. And by run I mean sprint faster than you ever have in your life, all right? _And for the love of Florence Griffith Joyner, all of us have to stay together!_ " They nodded, Ripley bounced in place, and Molly put her hand over Ripley's mouth before she could shout how ready she was for all the forest to hear. "All right now," Jen said and took Mal's hand. Molly took her other one, and they ran. Right at their heels, Jo and April corralled Ripley between them and followed.

They slowed down as they gained the shelter of the other side, whipping around an enormous, sprawling thorn tree that created a screen between the big path and their little one. With her head still partly in gaming mode, Jo cast about for something she could use as a weapon if she had to. None of the giant trees had low branches at all, but there was an under canopy and the ground was littered with all kinds of forest detritus. Jo told the others her idea about finding walking sticks, and within minutes they all had at least one big stick to their names.

Mal had a staff-sized branch in her left hand and a club the size and general shape of a baseball bat in her right. She seemed much happier. 

"Safety and shelter first," Jen murmured, and they set off again.

"What about food, though?" Mal asked.

"I have some snacks in my backpack," April said softly.

"You are the best," Jo said.

 

*

 

In the far distance toward the lake, Jo heard a thunderous clamor like what she imagined stampeding dinosaurs might sound like. Or those things that were like elephants but four stories tall, or maybe a bunch of those Cenozoic alligators that the museum said were bigger than a city bus. She waited, listening hard, but whatever it was wasn't headed in their direction. In fact, nothing was headed in their direction. She hadn't seen so much as an ant, much less a squirrel or lizard or bird, since they'd reached the rocky outcrop. All signs of animal life seemed centered on the lake.

"Guys, it's empty!" Ripley announced.

"Shhhh!" five other voices replied automatically and for the umpteenth time.

"Sorry!" Ripley whispered.

The entrance was a vertical crack in the lumpy round cap of exposed rock. It was shaped almost like a bent knee, only with more lines and globules tumbled down around the crown. They'd climbed up on top and seen nothing but smooth, wind-scoured stone: no nests or mountain lions, which why Jo was beginning to think all the local fauna was mega-sized.

Inside, it was almost pitch black. Jen used a tiny flashlight to examine an area that opened into a small cavern. A thin sliver of sunlight moved along the cave floor, though. That had to mean a fissure in the rock somewhere up high. "A chimney?" Jo asked.

"Looks like it," Jen agreed. "That's great. It means keeping a fire inside the cave won't suffocate us."

"Are we sure there's nothing else in here, though?" Mal asked.

"I checked every corner, high and low," Jen said. "Let's go get some firewood. At least we can stay warm tonight."

"So we're staying?" Ripley asked. At Jen's nod, she dug a piece of bright blue chalk from her backpack and wrote "ROANOKE" in giant letters on the stone next to the cave entrance. "In case Rosie and the Bear Woman come," she explained.

Jen smiled. "Excellent thought."

"What about water?" April asked. "I only have about an inch left in my bottle."

"Another good point." Jen pondered. "All right, we need to explore the area anyway. Let's take a walk around the summit and gather some firewood. The lay of the land here means there has to be at least one stream that goes down to that lake. Hopefully it isn't too far away. Remember that we're in a strange place, though. Do not go haring off into the unknown, Ripley. We don't know anything about this area or what else is in it, and we may not be able to get you back."

"I won't," Ripley answered in a small voice.

They found a spring a short walk around the summit. The water bubbling out of the rock was cold and clear, and Jo was suddenly thirsty. "Oh, for the love of Alice Hamilton!" Jen cried, turning out her pack and frantically going through the first aid kit again and again. "We have no water purification tablets! Also, obviously we have no pots on which to boil clean water. I have absolutely nothing with me to keep us from catching some horrible unknown interdimensional parasite. This can't be happening."

"Jen," said April calmly. "Underground spring water is as clean as groundwater gets, isn't it?" Jen nodded helplessly. "So when we get home, we tell them we got lost and had to drink from a spring. Then if we have to go to the doctor, we can do that. It won't be your fault."

"It tastes so good!" Ripley cried, elbows plunged into the pool and hands full of clear water.

"Use sand from the bank to scrub your hands," Jen said weakly and began doing so. 

Jo plunged her hands into the rivulet and drank thirstily. Even Bubbles woke up and jumped off of Molly's head to lap from the water's edge. Together, they all gathered around the spring and drank until something in Jo's gaming brain perked up and said, "Wait. Some of us should be on watch while the others have their backs turned."

Everyone else stopped, dripping hands or water bottles at their mouths. "Oh," said April. "That makes sense. Maybe two of us watch and the others drink?"

Jen visibly swallowed. "Thank you, Jo. Good call." 

"Don't worry about it," Jo said. "I only just realized. There's the whole perimeter check issue, too, once we all have water."

"Right," Jen said. "Right." She filled her bottle, drank it off, refilled it, drank half, and refilled it again before reattaching it to the sling on her pack. The others were doing the same. Then Mal and Molly took watch while April and Jo took their turn.

"Setting a watch," Jen murmured. "Water purification tablets. Perimeter. These are basics!"

"But this was only supposed to be a quick walk in the woods," April reminded her. "You can't blame yourself."

"Still," Jen mused, "if we're going to be here for more than a day, we'll need containers. And a cooking pot. Clay takes an oven to cure. Waterskins? Made from sheep or goat stomachs, cured, which I don't know how to do, also not just lying around. Baskets? Not watertight."

"What about bowls?" asked Mal. "I've got my pocketknife, too, and some of the rocks up here have sharp edges. Can we make a bowl from wood or something?"

Jen blinked for a moment, not answering, as if the thought of carving a bowl from scratch was more than she could process. Then Jen nodded. "That's a good idea, Mal. We need to inventory our resources, too. And if any of us has or is wearing anything waterproof, that would be good to know."

 

*

 

In the first days, they spent hours exploring their territory, because they considered it theirs now, and mostly not seeing much in the way of terrifyingly huge wildlife. They mainly stuck with Jen, soaking up every botany lesson in search of edible food. Even then, Jen wouldn't let them taste anything until they'd gone through the whole twenty-minutes-a-nibble protocol to see if it would kill them instantly or not. 

April smashed and scraped rocks together until she had an assortment of cave woman tools. She carved a hole for storing water into the cave floor next to their fire. A couple of days later, April made another one near it to use as a cook pot, after Jen remembered an article she'd read about using fire-heated rocks to boil soup. She also made an axe, a wedge for splitting wood, a hammer, and other tools to scrape and sand hewn wood into shallow bowls for them all.

Molly's homemade bow worked beautifully, but her attempts to make arrows that would fly true had hit a stumbling block. April's arrowheads were heavier than she was used to, and she didn't know how to make fletching, so they only hit her targets at very short range. Getting food now was a much higher priority than reinventing stone age archery, so Molly set that project aside and instead worked on spear-fishing spears, with April providing an array of different points. The first one she tested, she stabbed a stupendously huge salmon with actual saber-teeth. They roasted it in broad green leaves and went to sleep that night feeling sated and full.

Jen led them on daily expeditions, expanding their territory in an ever-widening circle around camp. On the third full day after falling out of the sky, they found what seemed to be an invisible line separating the summit and immediate surroundings from the rest of the forest. On one side, they were the only living creatures to be seen. On the other, the world was teeming with life, from thumb-sized beetles to slow, car-sized, furry things that hugged trees and made Jo think of both badgers and panda bears. 

At one point they came to a meadow full of flowers the size of couch cushions. Jo heard the hum first. "Stop," she whispered, putting up a hand, and the others froze in place. Ahead of them, three gigantic bees darted from flower to flower, gathering nectar with their enormous, terrifying probosces. 

"Oh my gosh," breathed April. She took a step forward, as if to get in front of Jo and shield her from the bees.

"And we're going around," Jen murmured from the rear and turned left through the trees that rimmed the clearing. The bees didn't seem to notice one way or the other.

They watched what the animals ate and gathered plants that resembled things Jen said were edible, which was how they ended up with beets the size of bowling balls and berries the size of Jo's fist. They talked about trying to make traps, but then Jen asked, "Does anyone know how to gut an animal? I can clean fish, but that's it." No one else did, either, and no one wanted to learn the hard way.

They weren't going to starve soon, anyway, and the Bear Woman would find them before much longer. She had to.

Just in case, though, they did make a habit of touching every significant-seeming branch and suspicious outcrop of rock they passed. "Who knows what could open a portal?" Jo insisted, reaching on tiptoe to grab the lowest branch of a prehistoric pine. 

"Do you want me to climb up?" Ripley asked. "That first cave only opened when I chased the eagle and stood on the branch way up at the top of that fir tree."

"You are not climbing every tree in this forest," Jen declared.

"I don't mind, though!" Ripley insisted and scampered up one of the smaller understory trees.

Jen sighed. Something squawked overhead. Ripley cried, "Eek!" and slid back down, eyes wide. "That was a really big winged lizard thing," she told them, voice shaking.

"That might have been poisonous or worse," Jen said, arms folded.

"Sorry," Ripley said, and actually did look a little chastened for once.

Time passed and Rosie and the Bear Woman still didn't come. 

They got their drinking water from the spring at the summit and washed further downstream, where the water flowed less than a foot deep over bare rock and was perfectly clear. At night they told stories around the campfire and went to sleep curled around each other against the terrifying crashes and roars that rose up from the direction of the lake. They didn't have blankets. They didn't have changes of clothes. They didn't have soap or shampoo, toothpaste or deodorant. They didn't have tampons or pads, and everyone but Jo and Ripley got their period and had to make do with moss. They didn't have a latrine, only a designated bathroom zone, leaves or moss for toilet paper, and a flat spade of rock for burying their waste. They didn't have privacy in any meaningful way, since they were constantly guarding each other's backs while they cleaned themselves and their single set of clothes or searched for food or otherwise tried to bend nature to their will. 

Jo got used to the others seeing her naked when she bathed, scrubbing herself with handfuls of sandy grit from the stream bed. She got used to the surprising variety of the other girls' female parts, and she tried not to feel too consumed with envy: there would be hormones when she got home, after all. The pharmacy already had the prescription. All she had to do in the meantime was survive.

They only ventured down toward the lake once. Mal's already ripped jeans had ripped so much that her right leg was almost bare. Jen said, "You know, this is a gross idea, but maybe we should think about fur."

"But you didn't want to have to skin anything," Jo said.

"But what if we can find something another animal has already killed. If it already ate...well, it isn't using the hide, is it?"

The girls blinked back at her, and April said, "We can try?"

"Do you know how to treat the skin, or whatever it's called, so it's wearable?" Mal asked.

"Vaguely, maybe? I think I remember something about scraping and smoking skins over a fire." Jen shrugged. "We won't know unless we try." 

Armed with sticks and spears, they made their way down through the woods at the edge of the river to the lowland approaching the lake. It was a long hike, but they were already better at moving quietly through the underbrush.

Jen was focused on the ground, looking, she'd said, for signs of a kill. Molly was on point and Jo was bringing up the rear when they reached a wide flood plain. Molly dropped, and April and Ripley immediately tugged Jen down to crouch next to a tree. Jo followed, and then stopped breathing, and then couldn't remember how to start again, and then felt April's hand squeeze hers hard and couldn't suppress her gasp of relief. Ahead and below were all the giant terrifying animals that roared and stampeded and screeched at all hours, including enormous toucan-beaked birds whose ostrich legs were taller than Jen, a herd of what looked like bison, only impossibly huge, all kinds of things with saber-teeth, and a handful of weird-looking dinosaurs. Their legs and feet were huge, their heads were tiny, and they mostly just swung their tails at other animals that got too close to their little herd. At the water line, Jo watched as something that looked for all the world like a monster, dinosaur-dwarfing whale with legs rose out of the lake. Cacophony erupted from the other creatures on the floodplain as it stalked heavily up the bank, gobbled up several of bison with a mouth full of shark teeth, turned in a great heaving, rippling, movement of wet whale-flesh, and oozed slowly back down into the water. It took a while for its fluke to disappear.

"So," Jen breathed. "We're going now."

Ripley nodded fervently. "I like our rock. It's a good rock."

Back at camp, Jen took her sewing kit from her bag, but Mal's jeans were so worn out that there wasn't much to work with. They ended up using scraps of her flannel shirttail to patch the pant leg together.

"Hey, look! I'm more punk than ever," Mal said and hugged Jen close. "Thanks for this. The hike was a good idea, too, even if the scary monster factor was totally off the charts. Maybe there are secret jackal lairs or whatever in another direction."

Jen laughed weakly. "Maybe. I think I'm going to need a few days to get up the nerve to try again, though."

In the end, it was four weeks until the Bear Woman and Rosie found them. 

 

*

 

On the other side, it had been a day and a half. The summer sun was just setting; the mess hall had closed, but Rosie had had trays set aside for them in case they came in late. Once they were fed, clean, and dressed in clean clothes, in that order, they gathered in Rosie's cabin to debrief.

"How did you find us?" Jo demanded. "How does any of this make any sense whatsoever? Down at the lake there were actual saber-toothed tigers and bird-things as tall as this cabin! How on earth did we end up back in time?!"

"I only have an answer to the first question," the Bear Woman said. "Your dubious camp director and I crossed through every dimensional portal in tarnation looking for any trace of you. Luckily, you got yourselves somewhere reasonably safe to wait."

"All I did was lean against a tree," Jen breathed, a sob creeping into her voice. "Next thing I knew, we were falling out of the sky."

"Tomorrow, you show me which tree," the Bear Woman said.

"It wasn't even off the path," Mal said.

"But the time travel," Jo pressed. She looked from the Bear Woman to Rosie. "Was it time travel?"

Rosie shrugged. "It's hard to tell. The portals don't all lead to the same sorts of places, but that's too long and complicated to get into tonight," Rosie said. "We can talk about it more later, once you're rested and feeling yourselves again."

"But we were there for four weeks!" April said. "And yet according to the clock—"

"Thirty hours," Molly said, "for twenty-eight nights. When Mal and I were in the place of lost things with the Bear Woman, that was only four hours for what felt like weeks."

"But that wasn't so much time time travel as...I don't even know?" Mal said. "I mean, there was that Greek ruins place, and also tyrannosaurs, and also that's where the Bear Woman's stolen reading glasses ended up. Because _lost_. This time, nothing was lost but us."

"And now you're back, safe and sound," Rosie said with finality. "I'm sure you're all exhausted, so I think it's time you headed back to your cabin and to sleep."

"But—" Jo began.

"I want Mister Sparkles," Ripley interrupted. "We can do the rest of this tomorrow, right, Jo? Jen? I'm tired."

"I want answers, but I also really want my bunk," said Mal.

Jo let out a resigned sigh. "Okay, I guess."

"Tomorrow, though," April said, looking at Rosie. "After we sleep, we'll be ready for that long and complicated story."

"Definitely," Jo said, and her cabin-mates echoed her.

"Jet, I think it's time to get your girls to bed." Rosie folded her arms and glared at them from behind her cat's eye glasses. "Good night, everyone. We're very glad to have you back. Pleasant dreams."

"It's 'Jen' and you know it," Jen muttered and pushed wearily to her feet. "Girls, now that we're home I feel like I could sleep for a year. How about you all?"

Half an hour later, pajama-clad and with deliciously clean teeth, Jo lay in her sleeping bag on her bunk's lumpy mattress and tried to get comfortable. It was more difficult than she expected; her body had already grown used to lying on a bed of soft moss over bare rock.

Across the cabin Ripley said into the dark, "Rosie's not going to tell us, is she?"

"I doubt it," said Jo and Jen at the same time.

"The Bear Woman might?" Ripley suggested.

"We can ask," April said. "Persistence counts for something."

"Thing is," Molly said, "the Bear Woman told me last time that she stayed because the woods had chosen her, not because she chose the woods. I wonder if this means the woods are choosing us?"

"But what does that even mean?" Jo said. "I've got important stuff to do after we go home in August. I can't keep falling down interdimensional portals and risk staying here forever."

"It can't choose me," April said. "I have to get back to my mom."

"Exactly," Jen said reassuringly. "We all have real-life commitments for after summer's over, but I don't think we have to worry about being trapped. Even the Bear Woman seems to be able to come and go as she pleases." Her words were interrupted by a huge yawn that Jo picked up and passed all around the room. "We'll find out more tomorrow."

"But what if Rosie just plays dumb with us again?" Ripley asked.

"Then we'll be persistent, like April said," Jen answered. "Believe me, I want answers just as much as you do. If that means we literally move ourselves and all our stuff into Rosie's cabin and follow her everywhere she goes? Well, let's just say at this point, boss or not, I am willing."

There was a collective sigh of relief and a chorus of "Thanks, Jen," followed by Ripley's nightly, "We love you, Jen." 

"Sleep tight, rapscallions," Jen said. "We've earned it."

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  Jo and her dads
> 
>   
> April and her dad
> 
>   
> Mal, Molly, Ripley, Jo, and April (Roanoke Cabin)
> 
>   
> Jen, their brilliant if not quite fearless counselor
> 
>   
> The Bear Woman and Rosie
> 
>  
> 
> Endnotes
> 
> 1\. Alas, Mermaid Lemonade Stand is not a real series. It should be, though.  
> 2\. [Florence Nightingale.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale) So much more than a nurse.  
> 3\. Sadly, Molly Weasley's Clock is not a real app. Some awesome woman programmer should get on that!  
> 4\. [Frances Gabe](http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blgabe.htm), pre-computing smart house pioneer  
> 5\. [Grace Hopper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper), programming pioneer  
> 6\. [Fanny Bullock Workman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Bullock_Workman), explorer extraordinaire  
> 7\. [Florence Griffith Joyner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Griffith_Joyner), fastest woman in the world  
> 8\. [Alice Hamilton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Hamilton), pioneer epidemiologist and toxicologist  
> 9\. [Malahayati](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keumalahayati), the first or second female admiral in history  
> 


End file.
